The present invention relates to a storage system, adapter apparatus, information processing apparatus, and a method for controlling the information processing apparatus. The present invention is preferably applied to, for example, a storage system.
Conventionally, when a failure occurs in a storage system composed of, for example, a host computer, Fibre Channel switch, and storage apparatus, the cause of the failure is determined by analyzing data that has been transmitted and received and specifying an apparatus or a part therein that caused the failure.
In a conventional storage system, a host bus adapter provided between the host computer and the Fibre Channel switch is not equipped with the means for retrieving data that is useful in analyzing a failure. Therefore, a conventional storage system adopts a method for specifying the cause of the failure by reproducing the situation where the failure occurred based on logs for data that has been transmitted and received at each of the host computer and the storage apparatus.
This method has a problem in that the storage system has to be stopped in order to artificially reproduce the situation where the failure occurred and consequently requires substantial time to handle the failure.
In the meanwhile, as a method for retrieving data in the event of failure in a storage system, Japanese Patent Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication No. 1993-204789 proposes a method in which a peripheral control apparatus, which is provided between a host computer and a storage apparatus and has a predetermined structure, retrieves data triggered by a failure occurrence signal transmitted from the host computer, and transfers the retrieved data to the storage apparatus.